章 2: Childhood Discarded
The booming voice of the gods startled Roy's five friends and awoke them from their slumber. As Alfonse slowly opened his eyes and looked around to see who screamed in his ears, he saw a figure in front of him. He rubbed his eyes to make sure that what he saw was real, but Roy was still in front of him.
"Huh? Am I dreaming?"
"Yeah, I think I'm seeing Roy's ghost," Jack added from the side. He looked at Roy who was walking toward them with a mix of shock and sadness. "Those fuckers didn't even give him a proper burial. Now he can't move on—ouch!"
Roy punched the top of Jack's head. "Don't fucking kill me so fast."
Jack looked up with an open mouth. He did not even care that he was just hit in the head, he was just shocked to see his friend in front of him. "Are you… Did you really escape? How?"
Robb, Fred, and Jaimie also stared at the young man with a mix of surprise and unbounded happiness. Roy scratched his head at his friends' reactions before smiling. His heart warmed and his eyes teared up a bit before he visibly sniffed them back up, "I told you I was gonna see you later."
His expression then turned serious as he remembered those dreadful green monsters. "Well, if you guys were able to sleep then that's a good thing."
He then took out David's knife and started cutting through his friends' shackles. The yellow ropes were thick and hard and Roy was bruised and weak, but he still pushed through and gritted his teeth. There was no time for him to muck around, those monsters could come around at any moment.
As he was halfway done with Jack's, the latter looked at him in amazement and asked, "What happened? How did you escape?"
"It's a long story," Roy answered, but his words immediately trailed off. In front of his eyes, weird letters and symbols appeared. They were colorful, as if they were written with a pen of light, and beautiful, more clean and orderly than even the writings of the merchants he so frequently raided.
Quest:
Description:
Kill 10 monsters (0/10)
Or
Kill 3 humans (0/3)
Rewards:
Status Awakening
Even though it was the first time he saw these symbols and he could not read them, he instinctively understood their meaning.
"Ehm, please tell me I'm not the only one seeing these things. I'm too young to be going crazy…"
No one answered. Alfonse's remark proved that these words and letters in front of them were real. These letters and symbols were so foreign, yet somehow so familiar, as if they were part of a memory they had all long lost. However, that familiarity did not bring with it joy, just endless questions and a deep sense of foreboding.
"Monsters? What are they talking about?" Jack's words broke the silence—but as if they were a summoning spell, two goblin-like creatures stumbled out from the shrubs behind the stables.
"My bad, I shouldn't have spoken."
Roy immediately sprung into action. Before the goblins could reach them, he cut the ropes tying his friends with increased vigor; right now, even a second was worth its weight in gold.
Just as he freed Alfonse, the latter thanked him and tackled the goblin that was screaming and running at Roy's back.
"Ah, shit!" The shrieking green creature stabbed Alfonse's hand before the other four could help. Jack immediately pushed him out of the way, while Fred and Robb pummelled down the monster with raging fists. Roy, on the other hand, kicked the second goblin in the face before it could harm his friends and tackled it to the ground.
He threw the dagger that the monster was holding away, before stabbing it multiple times in the ribs. He then ended its life with an overhead deep stab through its throat. Roy looked at the goblin's dying body with shocked but strangely focused eyes. Somehow, all thoughts and stray ideas were shut off from his brain, leaving only a focus on his every move to kill his enemy.
As the goblin drew its last gurgly breath, Roy saw the number of the monsters he killed at the left side of his vision jump from zero to one.
At the same time, Jack stomped on the other goblin's head, crushing it into a gooey mess of flesh, bones, and brain fluids.
"Finally…" Jack fell onto the muddy ground with a sigh, while the others were catching their breath. Only Roy and the young Jaimie didn't heave shallow breaths. Roy was still in his focused trance, looking around to see if there were any more threats. Jaimie on the other hand was shivering and looking at the ground.
As Jack caught his breath, he couldn't help but mutter, "What in the gods' holy names is happening? I-Is this the end of the world…"
Again, as if the gods in heaven were waiting for his words, pillars of light sprung up from the earth.
"You really should learn to shut the fuck up," Robb, who was silent the whole time stared daggers at Jack, while the latter could only let out a wry smile.
The beams of light clashed with the dark clouds above creating a massive rainbow halo that illuminated the rainy sky. Looking at this scene, Roy couldn't help but feel a sense of mesmerization welling up from his chest. The pillars of light sprouting all over the world reminded him of those of creation from the stories of Genesis he heard when he was a kid.
One of those beams, however, caught his eyes more than the others. It took over the Everlast mountain where their hideout was located. At that moment, Roy understood that the world was going through major changes—and these changes were an opportunity for him to change his and his friends' fate, and fulfill his ambitions.
Huh? Why did I think…
Even after the pillars dimmed out and the world returned to its original rainy darkness, the group of six friends stood in silence. All of them were lost in their own thoughts about this newly changed world.
Roy forced himself to snap out of his daze and looked at the rest of his friends. Alfonse, whose hand was stabbed by the goblin, was suffering in silence while holding tight to his wound.
"Come, let me wrap that for you." Roy cut a clean piece of his rugged clothes and wrapped it like bandages. From his past experiences, he knew that he needed to properly clean the piece of cloth before wrapping it. However, he had neither the leisure nor the possibility of doing so at the moment, so wrapping Alfonse's wound with a relatively clean piece of cloth was the best he could do.
"What should we do now, Roy? Go back and hide in the mountain?" Robb asked. He was a silent but serious type and had a lanky build perfect for scouting and running for miles.
"No," Roy answered. He then looked at the wounded Alfonse with a troubled expression before steeling his resolve. "The gods want us to kill ten of these creatures, so let's do that first."
"Ehm, do we really need to do that?" Jack asked with a troubled face. The other boys also looked at Roy with scared and indecisive eyes. While they weren't little city boys that never saw blood, they couldn't shake the fear of facing a crazed, bloodthirsty monster.
Roy walked past his friends and towards the goblin he killed. He pointed at the monster and said, "Look at this thing. Look at its height, look at its frame! It's like a sickly child with a dull knife in its hand! Are you guys really afraid of it?!"
Roy's voice was louder and more confident than his usual tone. He looked at his brothers who calmed down from their initial scare before continuing in a lower voice, "Plus we're not going to fight them head-on like morons. We're going to ambush them from where they can't see us and kill them before they can hit us back. If you think about it, it's just like any of the raids we did on those stupid greedy merchants."
Robb took a deep breath before looking at Roy with a serious expression, "Roy, Aiden is dead, so you're the chief now. If you say we should go kill them, we're gonna go kill them."
Remembering their leader Aiden's death, the group looked down with somber expressions and stayed silent for a couple of seconds. Fred, a tall muscular brown-haired teen, let out a chuckle to break out the silence and smiled, "You're fucking right, we're not some pussies. If they wanna kill us, we'll kill them first!"
Listening to Fred, Alfonse looked at Roy and asked, "I'm guessing you have a strategy in mind, right?"
"Yeah," Roy replied. He then looked at Robb and Jack, "You two are gonna do some scouting for us first, as usual. Check if there are any large groups of these monsters. I saw one running after the villagers, but maybe there are more. Other than that, see if there are any small groups of them, maybe two or three, but we can handle four."
"So, it's like usual then," Jack smirked at the thought.
"Yep, it's the same. When you find anything, one of you needs to come back to report while the other stays to keep track of things."
Roy looked blankly in thought to see if he forgot anything. After he made sure he said everything he needed to say, he nodded at his two friends. "Well, I guess that's about it. You guys know the drill, same signs as usual."
"Yeah, don't worry about it," Jack replied. "It's the same shit we've been doing for years. It's just creepy green goblins now—-Damn I miss the merchants already."
Roy let out a chuckle before giving Jack his knife. "Robb, Jack, make sure to stay safe. No matter what, if you're in danger, just fucking run."
The two nodded at Roy's words before walking out. Roy on the other hand looked back at the rest of his friends: Alfonse, Fred, and Jaimie. While the first two looked fine, other than the wound in Alfonse's hand, Jaimie's eyes were fixated with a horrid expression on the mangled corpses of the goblins. Roy walked up to the latter and put his hand on his face.
"Look at me, Jaimie, look at me." Jaimie looked at Roy with fidgeting eyes. "Are you scared? Of course, you would be scared, I'm scared too." He then showed Jaimie his left hand. It was cold, painted with the red blood of the goblins, and shivering in the rain.
Roy sat down on the muddy ground and looked at Jaimie, "It's good that we're scared, it's not bad. You know why?"
The young Jaimie shook his head and answered, "No, why?"
Roy smiled and put his index finger on his temple, "Because we're not stupid. If we were not scared, we would be arrogant. We wouldn't think about risks and we would die an early death. But because we're scared we can properly plan, we can survive and win fights we would normally lose, just a bit later."
Roy jumped up and gave his hand to Jaimie to help him get up. The latter's hand was no longer fidgety, and his eyes were calmer.
"Come with me." Roy walked towards the corpse of the goblin he killed. "Come, touch it."
Jaimie hesitated at first, but looking at Roy's smiling face, he forced himself to move and touch the corpse.
"How does it feel?" Roy asked.
"It's cold," Jaimie replied. "It's squishy, a-and soft."
"Yes," Roy replied. "It's cold because it's dead. And it's squishy and soft because of how frail it is. It barely has muscles in its arms, and its bones are only covered with veins and skin."
Roy looked around and found the dagger that the goblin was using before. He took it from the ground before asking Jaimie, "Jaimie, who do you love and want to protect the most?"
Jaimie was confused by Roy's question before looking back at the goblin beside him. "I want to protect Mary, Greg, Henry, and Jack." He then stuttered a bit before continuing in a low and shy voice, "I also want to protect you guys…"
Both Roy and Fred laughed heartily at Jaimie's remark while Alfonse was smiling from afar, still mending his wound.
"Look how little Jaimie has grown! You want to protect us? You have to get big like your brother first before you think of such a thing!"
Roy chuckled at the two's antics, before handing down the goblin's dagger to Jaimie. "Jaimie, take this dagger." He then looked seriously at the young boy before continuing, "Remember how I killed this goblin? I shoved my knife into its throat. No matter if they're human, animals, or monsters, if you stab their throat, they're going to die."
Roy paused and looked back at the goblin before continuing, "The world has changed. Now, there are fucking monsters going around that want to kill the ones you love and protect. You have to stand up and fight them first, you understand me?"
Jaimie nodded at Roy's words with resolute eyes before looking at the goblin with a fierce expression.
"Jaimie, I want you to stab that goblin. You can stab it wherever you want—throat, chest, stomach… Just make sure you give it a proper, strong push, okay?"
The boy nodded at Roy's words before piercing the solar plexus of the dead goblin with a reverse grip. Blood splashed on Jaimie's hands and clothes, but his expression was not fearful—just a mixture of rage and will.
"Good, Jaimie, you did well. Now, tell me how it felt."
Jaimie looked back at Roy and answered, "I-It was hard, but then, then it wasn't."
"Yes, remember that feeling. Once the skin gives way, the rest isn't hard, as long as you're hitting flesh and not bones."
With those words, Roy stood up to get back to the stables when he heard a shuffling from the forest outside the village. With a quick signal by hand, his three friends quickly hid in the stable. On the other hand, he went and grabbed the knife of the other goblin before rejoining them. The four looked at the ruffling in the forest from a small opening in the stable. From the trees, three goblins made their way into the village, each of them holding a weapon in hand.
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